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Press

Channel 4 gets real about sex

Channel 4 wants to talk about sex – real sex – the kind that is actually going on in Britain’s bedrooms. Sex involving people of every persuasion, age, race and proclivity because in an age of ever-increasingly accessible porn and fantasy, could we be in danger of losing touch with what this is?

Experts claim that the ever-increasing consumption of porn is distorting people’s expectations of sex so much that it is now damaging the sex lives of Britons. Studies examining if there is a discernible impact on young brains suggest children could be growing-up hardwired for porn.

The growth of pornography – legal porn now accounts for a third of global internet traffic – is having a massive impact on the sex lives of Britons. From young men who have grown up consuming porn and are now addicted to it on such a scale that they are struggling to lead normal lives, to couples who feel the pressure of ‘having sex like a porn star’ so much that they’ve simply stopped doing it. The Campaign for Real Sex aims to reclaim sex from the airbrushed, surgically-enhanced, depilated, gymnastic fantasies and celebrate the joy of real sex.

Porn on the Teenage Brain (w/t) is authored by journalist Martin Daubney, who resigned his position as editor of lad’s magazine Loaded after becoming a father and realising that he wanted nothing more to do with the world of soft porn that he'd been peddling for over a decade. Martin is on a mission to understand just how pornography has changed in the last decade and how it’s impacting today’s young people who are unwittingly consuming ever more extreme material because it’s free and an unregulated click away. Driven by the knowledge that his young son will soon reach the age at which most children first see pornographic images (10 yrs) Martin wants to understand the world that he feels partly responsible for and to discover what effects pornography is potentially having on the malleable brains of teenagers.

The Week the Women Came (w/t) is a warm and witty documentary bringing together a small group of ordinary British women, all of whom are now united in their pursuit of satisfying, more orgasmic sex. Over the course of the summer, they will receive expert help from Trudy Hannington, one of the UK’s leading psychosexual therapists. With regular therapy sessions and 'homework' to carry out with their partners, each woman will embark on a journey of sexual reawakening to confront her loss of libido or inability to orgasm head-on.

To show the reality of life with a porn star, three porn-obsessed British men will meet and date their favourite adult movie stars to see if they can distinguish between the fantasy and the reality. Date My Porn Star (w/t)will explore the boundaries between sexual fantasy and reality by introducing three porn fans to their favourite adult movie stars to see if it is possible for them to relate to the stars as fully-formed people or whether their porn obsession has fundamentally altered their perception of the opposite sex. It will also show the mechanics of the industry, from the casting couch to those who are ‘gay for pay’.

And porn is impacting on a generation yet to have sex. In Diary of a Teenage Virgin, a group of young people reveal what it’s like to be thinking about losing your virginity in 2013 with the shadow of pornography hanging over you, where the role models are tanned, pumped, waxed and enhanced. Diary of a Teenage Virgin also explores how sex education in schools is failing our young people; focussing on the mechanics rather than the emotions -leaving a generation unable to realise what real sex is and the part it should play in a loving relationship.

The Campaign for Real Sex also takes a tongue-in-cheek look at blue movies with a light-hearted romp through the farcical so-called ‘Golden Rules’ in this pastiche of porn – The Golden Rules of Porn (w/t).